Social life in 18th century Dublin

Chapter VI

Social Life In 18th Century Dublin

Many as have been the alterations in the physical features of Dublin since the close of the 18th century, the changes in its social conditions have been far more striking and important. In dealing with that century we are, for the first time in the city’s history, able to form an accurate idea of the circumstances of the ordinary lives of the people of Dublin, and to picture to ourselves a vivid presentment of the city as it then appeared to contemporary onlookers. A numerous and wealthy resident aristocracy who lived much of their lives in public, who fostered arts and letters, and set a high standard of public taste ; a local legislature in which oratory reached an unusually lofty level ; a viceregal court setting the example of profuse and magnificent hospitality: all these combined to render the metropolis of Ireland a place to be desired to dwell in; and laid up a store of traditions which are still fondly recalled, and which have done much to keep alive the desire for legislative independence so characteristic of the Ireland of our own times.

‘There never,’ writes the first parliamentary reporter, Mr. Woodfall, in a letter dated from Dublin 16th August 1785, ‘there never was so splendid a metropolis in so poor a country.’ A general mingling of classes in their amusements, rendered possible by well marked *caste *distinctions, permitted the Dublin shopkeeper to view with admiration, not unmixed with awe, the splendour of the nobleman at a public assembly, while the fashionable *beau *did not disdain to bandy *bon mote *with Travair the witty cobbler behind his ‘bulk’ in Chequer Lane.

The residentiary suburbs, now extending six miles in one direction alone, had then no existence; and the shores of Dublin Bay and the slopes of the Dublin mountains were studded with the ‘handsome residences of gentry and public officials, many of whom had previously lived generally in England, but whose brilliant equipages now gave life and movement to the somewhat dingy streets; while the stately town houses of the nobility still bear witness, though fallen from their high estate, of the social splendour of Ireland’s capital.

Leinster House, the Dublin residence of the chief of the Geraldines, is now the headquarters of the Royal Dublin Society, and its lawns are occupied by the buildings which accommodate on the one side the National Museum and the Museum of Natural History, and on the other the National Gallery and Library; Tyrone House, built by Cassels for Sir Marcus Beresford, Viscount and afterwards Earl of Tyrone, shelters the Government Department of National Education; Charlemont House is the abode of H.M. Registrar-General, and Moira House is a Mendicity Institution and Public Washhouse; but these and many other mansions are standing memorials of the altered conditions of modern life.

We have seen the growth of Dublin in population, in area, and in wealth during the eighteenth century, and a desire for better housing was one of its first results. The old cage-work or half-timbered houses constructed in Holland during the 17th century, so as to be taken down and put up at pleasure, and of which the last example stood in Castle Street at the corner of Werburgh Street, and was taken down as late as 1813, would no longer satisfy the requirements of a growing luxury.

St. Stephen’s Green, a rectangular space 1,220 feet by 970 feet, containing 27 English acres, and then considered the largest public square in Europe, was laid out and enclosed: Merrion Square, 1,030 feet by 530 feet, containing about half the acreage of its larger neighbour, was also laid out, and its northern side was already being built in 1792. It was soon surrounded by handsome dwelling-houses which are still the residences of leading professional men.

Kerry House, on the west side of Molesworth Street, which had come into possession of John Foster, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, in 1768, became the residence of his son, the Speaker of the House of Commons in 1773; and on the north side of the Liffey, Drogheda Street, now Upper Sackville Street, with its central mall 48 feet in width, planted with forest trees and enclosed by a dwarf wall surmounted by a low iron railing, formed a great oblong of buildings generally occupied by the nobility and gentry.

Amongst its residents were the Marquis of Drogheda, part of whose mansion now forms the premises of the Gresham Hotel; Sir Thomas Yeates, whose town house is occupied by the Hibernian Bible Society; the Earls of Westmeath and Altamont, amongst whose guests was Thomas de Quincey; Viscounts Belmore, Gosford, and Netterville, and many other members of both Houses.

After the building of the Rotunda, Rutland Square became a still more fashionable quarter, while the neighbouring thoroughfares of Marlborough Street, Great Denmark Street, and Gardiners’ Row each contained the dwellings of many notable peers.

But the abodes of fashion were not confined to these localities. A house and garden in Townsend Street, now a squalid slum, are advertised towards the end of the century as in a pleasing situation for a boarding school, the garden especially being -described as stocked with choice fruit-trees.

About the same time we read of the destruction by fire of the Countess of Brandon’s large mansion on Lazar’s Hill within a hundred yards of Hawkins’ Street Theatre. The erection of so many handsome residences accounts for a notable improvement in the various handicrafts connected with the building trade, and for the appearance of a number of highly skilled artisans, of whom Ed ward Smyth, the sculptor of most of the figures enriching the outsides of the public buildings Of the citv, is only a specially favourable instance.

The beautiful stucco tracery still to be seen in many of these residences exhibits the high degree of perfection to which this art was carried, and is still a subject of admiration; notably that preserved in the ceiling of an ante-room in Charlemont House, in the decorations of Belvedere House, Great Denmark Street, now a Jesuit college, in Tyrone House, occupied, as has been said, by the Commissioners of National Education, in Leinster ‘House and the Rotunda Chapel, and in the frieze and cornice of the Examination Theatre of Trinity College, commenced in 1777.

Indeed, even prior to the 18th century, Dublin was not without examples of beautiful workmanship in stucco. The chapel of the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, a building executed in 1680 from the design of Sir Christopher Wren, contains a ceiling attributed to Cipriani, and carefully reproduced in lighter material by Messrs. Jackson of London in 1903, which is a truly magnificent specimen of the plasterer’s art of the 17th century. A beautiful reproduction of a photograph taken of this ceiling appeared as an illustration in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries for 1903.

A fine example of the beautiful frescoes which adorned many of these houses is still to be seen in Kenmare House, 41 North Great George’s Street. The same house contains a good specimen of an almost lost art, known, from the name of its inventor, as ‘Bossi work.’ This was a method of inlaying marble, used especially in the construction of mantle-pieces. Carved mantle-pieces of beautiful workmanship were also of common occurrence; a good specimen, the cost of which in 1787 was £140, still adorns the board-room of Simpson’s Hospital in Jervis Street. The carved mahogany work of doorways and staircases reached a similar perfection, and specimens were, in quite recent times, to be found in many of the older city houses set in tenements. These have been of late years ruthlessly plundered alike of their mantlepieces and beautiful woodwork by dealers in these articles, and they now embellish the dwellings of some of the nouveaux riche of England and the United States.

The exteriors of many of these residences were ornamented with beautiful specimens of wrought-iron in lamp supports and extinguishers for the flambeaux then commonly carried to light the way of the sedan-chairs or coaches of the fashionable world when seeking their evening amusements. Some fine examples still exist in Ely Place and Merrion Square, for instance at Nos. 23 North, 38 and 46 East, and 53 South. A kindred craft is exemplified in the Dublin locks in Swift’s Hospital, which exhibit the high level reached by Dublin workmen in the locksmith’s craft.

Nor was the city less prominent in the arts which minister to personal adornment. The woollen manufacturers of Dublin employed between five and six thousand persons. The weaving of poplin, a material composed of a mixture of silk and wool, introduced by Huguenot refugees in the 17th century, gave employment to hundreds of skilled artisans, and the products of their looms. commanded a ready sale over the kingdom, and even on the continent of Europe. The beautiful needlework also with which this material was often enriched called out the highest efforts of national taste and artistic industry.

The superiority of Dublin poplin was said, like the excellence of her stout and whisky, to be due to peculiar qualities of the water, which may have accounted for a disinclination on the part of many of her inhabitants to the common use of so excellent a fluid internally or externally in its natural state.

The neighbouring northern coast town of Balbriggan produced, after the erection there in 1780 of cotton mills, a hosiery which is still widely in demand, while to the south Leixlip linens, distinguished by the admired copperplate printing, which delineated flowers in all their natural beauty, vied in excellence with those of Donnybrook and Ball’s Bridge.

Household furniture, jewellery, gold and silver lace, buttons, cutlery, gloves (‘they make mighty good gloves here’ says Mrs. Pendarves in 1731), were of first-rate home manufacture; while tanning, watch-making, iron founding, bell-casting, glass-making, printing and publishing, etching and engraving, were all thriving industries in the. Dublin of the 18th century, most of them now, alas! things of the past.

Much of the life of the leaders of fashions, was, as we have said, then lived in public, and public gardens, somewhat on the lines of those in modern German cities, became a necessity.

Cricket and football were unknown to fashionable society, but the game of Mall had been played in the enclosed central space, known as Gardiner’s Mall, of Drogheda Street (Upper Sackville Street), and bowling-greens were constructed in the New Gardens, College Park, Oxmantown Green and The Duke’s Lawn, in front of Leinster House.

But the public amusements of the fashionable world became curiously linked with an active philanthropy seldom rivalled in the annals of any city, which demands more than a cursory notice. In 1720 had been commenced the first of Dublin’s great modern hospitals; in which she is perhaps better provided than any city in Europe. Dr. Richard Steevens had, 10 years previously, bequeathed, for the founding of an hospital, his entire personal estate, producing an annual rental of £604, 4s., subject to a life interest to his sister Madam Grissel Steevens.

He died on the day following the execution of his will, whereupon his sister, with a generosity still recognised in the popular designation of ‘Madam’ Steevens’ hospital, reserving to her own use £150 a year and apartments in the hospital, handed over the whole estate to trustees for the purpose of immediately carrying into effect her late brother’s wishes.

The hospital adjoins St. Patrick’s hospital for lunatics, founded by Dean Swift in 1745, the year of his death, and opened in 1756, and is close to the terminus of the Great Southern and Western Railway at King’s Bridge. It was completed and opened for patients in 1733, at a cost of £16,000, collected by public subscription, the entire bequest of Dr. Steevens being reserved as an endowment.

Five years previously the Charitable Infirmary had been opened in a small house in Cook Street, but soon after removed to King’s Inn Quay. The site being required for the building of the Four Courts, the hospital was transferred about 1730 to Jervis Street. A charter was granted in 1792 to the Guardians and Governors of the Charitable Infirmary, Dublin. The building was taken down in 1803, and the present hospital erected.

In 1734 Mercer’s hospital was founded by Mrs. Mary Mercer, on the site of the ancient leper hospital of St. Stephen. This lady surrendered for the purpose the large stone house owned by her at the end of Stephen Street. (O’Keeffe notices the curious fashion in which the Dublin citizens omit the prefix ‘Saint,’ doubtless owing to the Puritan leanings already referred to, still often in evidence in the proceedings of the Diocesan Synod of the Church of Ireland. It is not unusual to hear the National Cathedral referred to as ‘Patrick’s’ and the Parish Churches as Catherine’s, Mary’s, Werburgh’s, etc., while Kevin Street, Bride Street, Thomas Street, George’s Street, etc., have long lost their original prefix. The Roman Catholic churches are commonly designated by the name of the locality in which they are built, as Clarendon Street, Whitefriars Street, Westland Row, etc.) The ground on which it stood being glebe was given to the charity by the Archdeacon of Dublin.

The Hospital for Incurables, established in Fleet Street in 1744, the funds being provided by the Charitable Musical Society, founded in 1743 by Lord Mornington, father of the Duke of Wellington, was removed in 1753 to Townsend Street, and in 1792 transferred to its present spacious premises in Donnybrook, the Governors having exchanged their former quarters for those of the Westmorland Lock hospital, which latter still occupies the building in Townsend Street.

In 1745 the lying-in hospital in George’s Lane, the first institution of the kind in the British dominions, was opened by Dr. Bartholomew Mosse, who furnished it at his own cost with 24 beds. Three years later he acquired, at a yearly rent of £70, a piece of waste ground, consisting of about five acres, in Great Britain Street, facing the end of Drogheda Street, as the upper end of Sackville Street was then called. On this he expended £2000 in laying out the grounds as a public garden and promenade, reserving a site for an hospital, larger than the house in George’s Lane. For it he obtained a design from the great German architect, Richard Cassels, then resident in Dublin.

The new building was estimated to cost £20,000, and the foundation stone was laid on the 4th June 1751 by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who ‘rode to the New Gardens with his attendants, went through the prescribed forms, and subsequently partook, in the parlance of the period, of a “genteel and liberal entertainment” provided by the founder.” (Around and About the Rotunda. Sarah Atkinson)

During the next four years, by means of plays, oratorios, and lotteries, a sum of £11,694 was collected; but Dr. Mosse’s means were then exhausted, and the Irish Parliament came to the aid of the undertaking with a grant of £6000, followed within 12 months by another donation of the same amount. The hospital, now equipped with 50 beds, was opened by the Viceroy, the Duke of Bedford, on the 8th December 1757.

The New Gardens had from the first constituted a material source of income for the charity. Dr. Mosse had spared no expense in laying them out as a fashionable resort; they possessed an artificial waterfall lit with. ‘artificial moon light; and were provided with a coffee room and pavilions. The artist Van Nost, a Dubliner of foreign parentage, was employed to execute figures in marble and metal, as well for the gardens as for the interior of the buildings. The circular hall, connected with them, had subsequently been erected for the performance of concerts, and the holding of balls, promenades, and public assemblies. This structure, since known from its shape as the Rotunda, is still used for similar purposes.

The exterior is chiefly remarkable for the Wedgewood frieze, the design of which, resembling that over the portico of the Custom House, represents the skulls of oxen with festoons of drapery. The interior was eminently suited for the purposes for which it was built. The principal or Round room, 80 feet in diameter, having no central supports, possessing excellent acoustic properties, and affording accommodation for 2000 persons, was, as a concert or ball room then unsurpassed in the kingdom.

Its decoration too left nothing to be desired. Adorned with fluted Corinthian pilasters, with a handsomely decorated ceiling, bright with gilding and brilliantly lighted, when filled with a motley throng including the *elite *of the nobility and gentry attired in the gorgeous and picturesque. costumes of the period, it must have presented a striking spectacle.

There was to be seen the portly figure of Lord Trimleston dressed in scarlet, with full powdered wig and black velvet hunting-cap; the elderly, middle-sized Lord Gormanston in a full suit of light blue; Lord Clanrickard in his regimentals; while Lord Strangford wore under his coat his cassock and black silk apron to his knees, and the clerical hat peculiar to these times, and Lord Taaffe appeared in a whole suit of dove-coloured silk.

A strange figure was Captain Debrisay when upwards of 70 years of age still wearing the dress of the reign of Charles ii., ‘a large cocked-hat all on one side his face, nearly covering his. left eye; a great powdered wig, hanging at the side in curls, and in the centre at the back a large black cockade with a small drop curl from it; his embroidered waistcoat down to his knees; the top of his coat not within three inches of his neck, the hip buttons about a foot from it; buttons all the way down the coat but only one at the waist buttoned; the hilt of the sword through the opening of the skirt ; a long cravat, fringed, the end pulled through the third button-hole; small buckles; the coat sleeves very short, and the shirt sleeves pulled down, but hid by the top of the gloves, and the ruffles hanging out at the opening of the cuff; the waistcoat entirely open except the lower button, displaying the finely plaited frill. (Recollections of John O’Keefe) Such, in his bodily presentment, was the old courtier who we learn ‘walked the streets of Dublin unremarked.’

Nor were these gatherings ungraced by the presence of ladies of equal rank. Amongst the first subscribers were the Duchess of Leinster, the Countesses of Shannon and Charlemont, and Viscountesses Delvin and Kingsborough. But the company was not limited to such notabilities. Dr. Baldwin, Provost of Trinity College, ‘a meagre old man’, and George Faulkner, the printer, ‘a fat little man with large welt-powdered wig and brown clothes,’ might be seen with Hamilton, the miniature painter, ‘tall and thin, very fair and delicately florid, with blue eyes and light hair’; and Geminiani the musician flaunted it with the best in ‘a costume of blue velvet heavy with gold embroidery.’ The actor, John O’Keefe, from whose recollections these portraits are drawn, was himself gorgeous in his attire, calling upon Macklin, his brother actor, ‘in a sea-green tabinet coat lined with white silk,’ and sitting for his likeness in ‘a claret-coloured coat, green waistcoat edged with gold, and hair full dressed.’ (Amongst articles stolen from Rathfarnham Castle on 4th April 1751, we read of ‘a bloom colour, cross-barred and flowered with silver, suit of clothes; a yellow suit brocaded with silver and colours; a stripped *(sic) *and brocaded lute string suit on a white ground and a cherry coloured velvet mantell, linned *(sic) *with white satin and bordered with ermine)

The appearance of the ladies was no less remarkable, especially in the matter of hair-dressing. At this period a lady in full dress could not go in a coach, a sedan- chair was her carriage, and this had a cupola. The seat was on grooves to be raised or lowered according to the altitude of the head-dress’; and O’Keeffe mentions that on one occasion the seat had to be lowered to within three inches of the floor! on which the lady ungracefully squatted, while the structure on her head with feathers and capwings rose three feet perpendicular.

At a performance in a Dublin theatre of Garrick’s farce, ‘Bon Ton’ the feathers of a lady’s head dress caught fire from the chandelier hanging over the box, and its wearer narrowly escaped with her life. This, however, was soon altered. The beautiful Anne Catley, the celebrated singer, having chosen to wear her hair plain over her forehead, in an even line almost to her eyebrows, succeeded in setting the fashion in this respect, so that the ladies had their hair ‘Catley-fied.’

Such was the company which made the New Gardens and the Round Room centres of fashionable life. The Sunday promenades, first started in St. Stephen’s Green, but soon transferred to the New Gardens, realised £1000 per annum. Masquerade balls, the first of which was held in 1776, and open evenings on which music was provided, and to which the public were admitted on payment of five pence, did much to brighten the society of the period; and incidentally supplied the main source of income of a most deserving charity. The surrounding district speedily became the favoured residentiary quarter, and the fine houses in the neighbouring thoroughfares, now in many instances deserted and decaying, and the unfinished lines of the Royal Circus, at the top of Eccles Street, bear witness to the once fashionable tone of Dublin’s most neglected quarter.

The change can scarce{y be better emphasised than by two announcements from a contemporary newspaper.(*The Town and Country Weekly Magazine, *Wednesday, 1st February 1786)

BIRTHS

In Pill Lane, the lady of H. Auchinleck, Esq., of a son.

In Gloucester Street, the Right Hon. Lady Louisa Blake, of a daughter.

But Mosse’s Gardens, as the grounds of the Rotunda were then called, were not the only resort of the gaiety-loving classes. John O’Keefe mentions Marlborough Green in the same neighbourhood, ‘a sort of tea-drinking place; with singers, bands of music, etc., greatly frequented.’

An unfortunate *fracas *which occurred here between Lord Delvin, an officer of Dragoons, and George Reilly, a captain of Foot, in which the former was mortally wounded, led to the abandonment of the Green as a fashionable promenade.

About 1767 the Ranelgagh Gardens, in the south-east suburbs, spoken of by O’Keeffe as ‘a favourite resort of our youthful pleasure parties,’ were opened as an hotel and place of public resort on the model of Vauxhall. The house had been the residence of a bishop, but was taken by Mr. Hollister, an organ builder from London, who laid out the grounds ‘in alcoves, bowers, etc., for tea-drinking parties’, and also constructed a theatre for burlettas.

They, too, were deserted before the end of the century, and were then purchased by Carmelite nuns, and by them converted into a nunnery which purpose they still continue to serve.

From these gardens on 19th January; 1785 Richard Crosbie, born in the county Wicklow, was the first native of these islands to adventure an ascent in an air balloon. ‘The balloon and chariot,’ says the *Annual Register, *‘were beautifully painted, and the arms of Ireland emblazoned on them in superior elegance of taste.’ The dress of the aeronaut ‘consisted of a robe of oiled silk, lined with white fur, his waistcoat and breeches in one, of white satin quilted, and morocco boots, and a montero cap of leopard skin, ‘which might afford hints for a modern motor costume. The Duke of Leinster, Lord Charlemont, Right Hon. George Ogle, … attended with white staves, as regulators of the business of the day.’ The ascent was a failure, an assistant of Mr. Crosbie finally making the attempt, and falling into the sea 9 miles east-north-east of Howth, whence he was rescued. A later attempt on the 23rd July ‘was more successful, but the aeronaut failed to cross the Channel to Holyhead, as he had intended, and was brought back to Dublin by the *‘Dunleary’ *barge, which the Board of Commissioners had sent out to attend him.

The arrival of the Duke of Rutland as Viceroy in 1784 gave a fresh impetus to the social festivities of Dublin. His Excellency sailed by the ordinary packet from Holy-head in the absence of the royal yacht, which had been blown out of her course. He landed at Poolbeg, and was conveyed by the Ringsend barge to Rogerson’s Quay. Gifted alike with youth, good looks, and an ample fortune, and further happy in the possession of an amiable and very beautiful consort, it need scarcely be wondered at that he soon acquired considerable popularity; damped to some extent, it is true, by the political dissatisfaction of the citizens.

A munificent patron of the arts, dispenser of a princely hospitality, and setting himself the not uncongenial task of ‘drinking the Irish into good humour,’ the new Viceroy inaugurated a round of magnificent public entertainments, and the gaiety of Dublin rose to fever heat. His advent was celebrated by a banquet to the newly-installed Knights of St. Patrick, followed by a ball, at which the company appeared in fancy dresses.

The trustees of the Rotunda Hospital lost no time in launching their venture on the flood-tide of social dissipation. Arrangements were made by them for holding six assemblies each year, alternating with the Castle balls, from the 20th January to the 20th April. Free admission tickets were ‘sent to some of the principal instructors in dancing in the city, and as we learn from their prospectus: ‘It remains with ladies and gentlemen of the first rank to determine whether this entertainment shall be of real use to Society as well as to the Charity. Their constant Presence in the narrow circle of a Dublin Assembly must awe into propriety and repress every species of improper conduct that an indiscriminate Association might occasion.’

The building was extended by the addition of the Pillar room and the Concert room above it, each 86 feet long by 40 feet broad, the former being used as a ballroom and the latter as a supper-room, kitchens and offices being at the same time added.

The North Circular Road now became a fashionable driving resort, where the beautiful Duchess might be seen in the magnificent viceregal equipage. Here, Lord Cloncurry tells us in his *Personal Recollections, *‘it was the custom, on Sundays, for all the great folk to rendezvous in the afternoon, just as, in latter times, the fashionables of. London did in Hyde Park; and upon that magnificent drive I have frequently seen three or four coaches-and-six, and eight or ten coaches-and four passing slowly to and fro in a long procession of other carriages, and between a double column of well-mounted horsemen.’

Here O’Keeffe saw Lord Howth with ‘a coachman’s wig with a number of little curls, and a three-cocked hat with great spouts,’ while the ‘horsey’ character of the St. Laurence family was further evidenced by the ‘bit of straw about two inches long’ which his Lordship carried in his mouth.

But a gloomy pageant was soon to replace these public festivities. Towards the close of 1787 an illness attacked the Duke on his return from Belfast, where he had been sumptuously entertained by the already rising town. The illness developed into putrid fever, and at six o’clock on the morning of the 27th November the minute guns in the Phoenix Park announced the death of the Viceroy.

He had a magnificent public funeral, and his memory is still perpetuated by a monument in the centre of the west side of Merrion Square, formerly an ornamental fountain. It was executed in 1790 by Mr. Coade of London, and originally consisted of a shell-formed reservoir supported on rock work projecting 47 feet. The tablet in the centre represents the Marquis of Granby relieving the family of a distressed soldier, and the medallions on either side are portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Rutland. They are all much dilapidated, and were already decaying in 1807, a century ago!

It may readily be imagined that music formed a chief source of attraction to this pleasure seeking public. Geminiani, the Italian already mentioned, had a concert room in Dublin in a court at the College end of Dame Street. We find the post of Master and Composer of State Music in Ireland offered to but refused by him, as it could not be held by a professing Roman Catholic.

In 1741 the Music Hall in Fishamble Street (Fish-shamble Street, formerly le Fyschamlys, the Vicus Piscatorium of the early chroniclers) had been built. Ten years later Castruccio, another Italian composer, had been honoured by a splendid public funeral, the procession in which ‘formed a fine concert vocal and instrumental.’ In 1760 the D’Amici family introduced the Italian ‘burletta’ in the Smock Alley theatre, and, at the same house, Passerini, an eminent Italian composer of oratorios and serenatas, produced his own works, in which his wife assisted as a performer. The Beggars’ Opera, soon after its appearance in London, was performed by children in a booth erected in George’s Lanee

But the great event in the musical history of Dublin is the first production of Handel’s *Messiah, *which took place in that city at noon on Tuesday, 13th April 1742. It has been stated by Mainwaring in his *Life of Handel *that the *Messiah *was first performed in London and coldly received. This, however, is controverted in Victor Schoelsher’s Handel, (*Life of Handel, *London, 1857, p.250 et seq.) and it has been recently conclusively proved by Dr. Robert M’Donnell (*New Ireland Review, *March 1902.) that Dublin is fully entitled to the honour to which she has long laid claim in this respect.

Briefly, the composer’s own note at the end of the score dates the completion of the *Messiah *12th September 1741. In *Faulkner’s Journal *and *Pue’s Occurrences, *two Dublin newspapers, we find the contemporary announcement of Handel’s arrival in Dublin on 18th November, and the advertisement of a musical entertainment to be given by him in the New Music Hall on 23rd December at seven o’clock.

If we allow a fortnight for the journey, in view of a short stay made by him at Chester, we may infer that he left London about the 4th of the same month. Thus a period of little more than seven weeks elapsed between the completion of the score and his departure for Dublin; and during this time no contemporary allusion has been discovered to any London performance.

Finally, referring to the first rehearsal of the work in Dublin, *Faulkner’s Journal, *in its issue of 10th April 1742, speaks of the ‘Noble and Grand Charity *for which the Oratorio was composed. *(New Ireland Review, March 1902.)

The choirs of both Cathedrals assisted in this performance, which took place in the Music Hall, Fishamble Street, and the violinist Matthew Dubourg, a friend of the composer, assisted in forming an orchestra. The price of admission was half a guinea, and we find that books of the words could be had ‘at a British sixpence each.’ The principal soloists, who, as well as all concerned, gave their services gratuitously, were Mrs. Cibber and Signora Avoho; and the Viceroy, the Archbishop of Dublin, and the Senior Fellows of Trinity College were amongst the audience, which numbered 700, and the three charities (Mercer’s Hospital, the Society for Relieving Prisoners, and the Charitable Infirmary.) which shared in the profits received about £400.

A second performance took place on 3rd June, and Handel remained in Dublin in all for about nine months, during which he produced Acis and Galatea -referred to in the diary of a lady of the period as *‘Asses *and Gatatea,’ - *Alexander’s Feast, Hymen, *and other works.

It was commonly believed that the organ on which ha played the *Messiah *was that now in St. Michan’s Church, but the instrument so used was a chamber organ, and was preserved at 64 Eccles Street in the collection of curiosities of Francis Johnston, the architect.

The public taste for good music even overcame the religious prejudices of the Protestants of those days, As we read of ‘a famous convent in Channel Row, (The chapel built for Benedictine nuns in the reign of James ii., afterwards. transferred to Dominicans brought from Galway in 1715. It is now the ‘Chapel Ward’ of the Richmond Surgical Hospital) Dublin, where the most celebrated Italian musicians help to make the voices of the holy Sisters more melodious; and many Protestant fine gentlemen have been invited to take their places in a convenient gallery to hear the performance’. (Stephen Radcliffe, A Serious Inquiry, etc.)

A further impetus was given to musical taste by the desire to assist the many benevolent objects for which funds were needed. The various hospitals and other charitable institutions, so generously founded, required equally generous support. Numerous charitable musical societies, similar to that founded by Lord Mornington, existed, whose amateur members gave public performances in aid of their funds, one such society specially interesting itself in small charitable loans to industrious tradesmen.

The history of the Rotunda and its gardens gives us one main source of the income of the hospital with which they were connected, and even the masquerade balls brought in a considerable revenue to the Dublin charities. The father of the present writer has often told him of similar entertainments of a later date which he had attended in his youth, at one of which a gentleman of high social position, by his amateur performance of the ‘three-card trick,’ realised a large sum for the charity concerned as the proceeds of his somewhat questionable skill.

In a weekly newspaper of April 1785 we find mention of ‘a humane and considerate gentleman who carried the City Marshalsea box at the Masquerade, with the result that he collected for the poor debtors ‘one guinea, 13s; 6d. in silver, (This is accounted for by the Irish shilling being equal to 1s. 1d., and the coin corresponding to a ‘British sixpence’ 61 d. The guinea was £1, 2s. 9d., and the half-guinea 11s. 41 d) two *bad *shillings, and 9d. in copper.’

The proceeds of theatrical performances were also often devoted to such purposes. For instance, the pupils of the school kept by Samuel Whyte in Johnston’s Court, at the rear of his house now No.79 Grafton Street, at which school were educated Richard Brinsley Sheridan and his sister Alice and the poet Thomas Moore, gave a performance of *Cato *in Crow Street Theatre, which was repeated for the benefit of Dublin charities. In 1770 we find in the diary of a lady an entry of the cost of dresses for two of her nephews who acted the parts of Marcia and Juba, possibly on this occasion.

At other amateur theatricals, we are assured by O’Keeffe, ‘gentlemen of the first rank acted as door-keepers.’ Nor, as may readily be imagined, were the churches behindhand in such pious efforts. We read of a performance of the *Messiah *at the ‘Round Church’ (Built in 1793 in form of an ellipse, 80 feet by 60 feet; burned in 1860, and replaced by the present church of St. Andrew) for the benefit of Mercer’s Hospital; and that at the celebrated Dublin preacher Dr. Kirwan, by an appeal in St. Peter’s Church on behalf of the Meath Hospital, (Founded in 1753 in Meath Street, afterwards removed to Earl Street. Another hospital was erected in 1774, by private subscription of £2000, on the Coombe, to serve as the County Dublin Infirmary, and the present hospital erected in Heytesbury Street, 1816-1822.), realised no less than £1500-watches, jewels, and bracelets being, we are told, flung on the collecting plates by a fashionable audience.

The Government and municipal authorities also were not unmindful of their duties in this respect. By an Act (25th George iii.) of 1785 the Governors of the Rotunda were empowered ‘to ccollect and levy the sum of 35 shillings and sixpence sterling for every sedan-chair which any person shall keep in his or her possession in the city of Dublin, or within one mile thereof.’ As the private sedan-chair was the ordinary mode of conveyance within the city for persons in fashionable society, the amount realised must have been considerable. Of this tax 10s. was devoted to the cost of the city police, the balance coming into the funds of the hospital. A further contribution was allowed to be levied of 1s. 9d. per foot of frontage for lighting, and 3d. per foot for painting the garden rails of the new houses forming Rudand Square; this tax realising, in the case of Charlemont House which had four lamps, 16 guineas per annum.

Meantime the streets and business premises benefited but slowly by the improvement of the city. Some of the main avenues had indeed been widened, but the business streets of the time - Castle Street, Bride Street, Skinners’ Row, Essex Street, Francis Street, Thomas Street, and, on the north side, Capel street-remained in general narrow, dingy, and ill-kept thoroughfares.

Of parts of this district we read: ‘Of these streets a few are the residence of shopkeepers or others engaged in trade, but a far greater proportion of them, with their numerous lanes and alleys, are occupied by working manufacturers, by petty shopkeepers, the labouring poor, and beggars crowded together to a degree distressing to humanity.’ (Warburton)

In a contemporary print pigs are to be seen wandering in College Green, and heaps of rubbish in the channels rendered the crossing of a street a disagreeable experience. The paving of the city was not seriously taken in hand till 1775, when an Act was passed for a general pavement of the streets of Dublin; The system adopted was that known as ‘pitching,’ or the use of small round boulder stones, remains of which are yet to be traced in back thoroughfares.

Though public lighting had preceded paving by more than half a century, the illumination afforded was of the most meagre description. In a newspaper of Friday, 12th August 1785, we find the following paragraph: ‘The entrance into Great George’s Street from Dame Street is in a situation extremely dangerous, which is heightened by there not being a single lamp to show the way to the unsuspecting passenger. A few nights ago a clergyman passing by that place fell down the precipice, and was dangerously hurt.’

Indeed, at the commencement of the 19th century, the immense square of St. Stephen’s Green was lit only by 26 small oil lamps, placed nearly sixty yards ‘apart. The lighting of Grafton Street may be judged by the complaint of Mr. William Witherington to the Paving and Lighting Board of the Corporation, dated 2nd February 1785, desiring to state on oath that ‘the lamp at his house, and almost all in the street, are not lighted till after dark, and are frequently out at five in the morning; that the lamplighters told him they were not allowed oil enough, and to the best of his opinion his globe was not cleaned once these three months past.’

The ill-defined footways added much to the dangers of pedestrianism, which were still further increased by reckless driving. For instance, in 1764 a gentleman complains that ‘he had like to** **have been killed by a fellow breaking a pair of young horses in one of the most frequented streets of Dublin, viz. Dame Street’; and on the same narrow street, on another occasion, ‘he ‘had the mortification to see six horses before the carriage of a coach driven in a most inhuman manner to the great danger and terror of the passersby.’

The houses were not numbered, and each place of business was known by the name of its sign,’ many of them very quaint and amusing: such as the Dove and Pendants, where fans were sold; the Goat and Monkey, a music-shop; the Eagle and Child, the house of a chimney-sweep; the Hen and Chickens, a stay-maker’s; while the Tea Tub in Stephen’s Street was a milliner’s, and the Royal Leg and Royal Stocking were rivals for the sale of hosiery.

Provisions were commonly purchased in the public markets, of which there were several. These were attended by ‘penny porters,’ who carried home the buyer’s purchases for a small fee. This custom was still in vogue in the Cork market about a quarter of a century ago. Prices were low: beef is quoted 3d. to 4d. per lb., mutton 31 , veal 4d., and potatoes 1s. 4d. per cwt. on the quays.

The shops, indicated as above, were generally raised by two or three steps above the footway, and were dark, dingy, and uncomfortable, lighted by narrow windows glazed with small panes of inferior glass.

The standard of comfort did not as yet warrant the shop-keeper’s ownership of a private dwelling - house; he accordingly inhabited the rear of his shop and the premises above it. Nor were visits to the seaside, much less continental tours, things which entered into the outlook of the Dublin shopkeeper of the 18th century He contented himself with a walk to Ringsend, to eat cockles ‘at a very good tavern, the sign of the Highlander,’ and to ‘play billiards at Mrs. Sherlock’s, the price 2d. a game to the table,’ the marker being the proprietress herself, a sister of a celebrated broadsword player, who defeated Figg, the well-known English champion.

The sands of Sandymount and Raheny were long celebrated for their cockles, which took with the Dubliner the place of the winkle or shrimp with his Cockney cousin; while the oyster-beds of Clontarf and Malahide afforded the citizens a cheap and excellent supply of the superior bivalve. The well-known entertainer of a past generation, Valentine Vousden, alludes to the former in his once-popular song, ‘Larry Doolin’s Jaunting Car’:-

‘I’ll take you to Raheny to pick cockles on the strand.’

Even Dubliners of a superior rank took short flights for their infrequent holidays. In the diary of Mrs Katherine Bayley, wife of the Deputy Clerk of the Pells (an official of the Court of Exchequer), a lady of independent means, residing in Peter Street, we find that Harold’s Cross was then a favourite suburban resort for change of air. The lady in question took lodgings there in 1754 at the rate of 15s. a week, for which modest payment she had ‘two middle rooms, the street closet, use of the parlour and kitchen, with a bed for my man-servant, the dairy, and leave to walk when we please in the garden.’ (Journal RSAI, 1898, vol xxviii, o. 142)

In the same neighbourhood O’Keeffe speaks of ‘Temple Oge *(sic) *the seat of Sir Compton Domville, a pretty place, the garden delicious,’ and of a ‘beautiful place belonging to Mr. Deane of Terrynure’ (now Terenure).

Yet large fortunes must have been realised, as Dublin contained a large and wealthy resident population, who did their shopping almost exclusively in the city, and the profits of the distributors must have been very considerable.

Indeed, the dangers and inconveniences of the Channel passage would be quite enough to deter any but the most venturesome from frequent crossings to England. In 1619 Viscount Thurles, father of the great Duke of Ormonde, had been wrecked off Holyhead on the Skerries rock, and drowned in company with the son of Lord Dunboyne.

Though the intercourse between the countries had considerably increased” by the commencement of the 18th century, the Irish Sea still formed a much more serious obstacle than it does at present. The crossing from Holyhead to Kingstown, which is now punctually accomplished in 2H hours, then required, under the most favourable)le conditions, from 10 to 12 hours, (*Hibernia Curiosa: *account of a tour in Ireland in 1764. T Bush, Dublin, 1769.) while with contrary winds the would-be passengers might spend days or even weeks in vain attempts to reach the opposite shore.

The usual starting-point on the Welsh coast was Holyhead, which had replaced Park Gate, on the Dee, as the regular port for Ireland, and Ringsend was the original place of debarkation, whence a ‘Ringsend car’ transported the chilled and weary traveller to the city, unless he should indulge in the luxury of a coach, the usual cost of which was 2s. 10d.

Strangers were advised ‘to stay at one of the coffee-houses in Essex Street, by the Custom House. (Ibid.) The packets sometimes, however, entered the ricer, and sailed to and from George’s Quay. We learn from the diary of a gentleman who visited Ireland in 1755 that on 2nd April he ‘had notice of the *Prince Frederick *packet being to go over that evening’ and went on board at George’s Quay at four o’clock in the evening. They did not weigh anchor till four o’clock on the morning of the 3rd, and, with the wind from the east, they only got within four or five leagues of Holyhead before sunset on the 4th, when, a storm arising, they were driven back, and again reached Dublin at eight o’clock on the evening of the 5th. The traveller left Dublin again at ten o’clock on the morning of the 10th April, and landed in Holyhead Bay at twelve noon on the 11th. (Journal RSAI for 1899, vol. xxix. P.56)

In O’Keeff’s *Memoirs *we read that he once spent ‘five nights at sea with tremendous storms,’ in a vain attempt to cross St. George’s Channel, and that on another occasion the vessel on which he sailed ‘twice struck on a sandbank.’ On the erection of the Pigeon House at the end of the south wall of the Liffey, an hotel was built in 1790 for the accommodation of ‘persons having occasion to pass and re-pass between this city and England,’ (Dublin Chronicle, 3rd August 1790) which was managed by Mrs. Tunstal, wife of the Inspector of Works to the Ballast Board.

In 1798 the Pigeon House, including the hotel, was leased to the Government by the Ballast Board, and in 1814 sold to the former for £100,000 for the purposes of a place of arms and military post. The hotel was continued till 1848, when Mrs. Tunstal took up her residence in Sandymount. In 1897-9 the Pigeon House Fort again changed hands, and was sold to the Dublin Corporation for conversion into the power-station where is generated the electricity for the lighting of Dublin.

The present magnificent system of internal communication in Dublin presents a wonderful change on that of the 18th century. The state of the streets rendering walking difficult, if not dangerous, sedan-chairs were on hire in various localities. The last of these vehicles stood in Hume Street, adjoining St. Stephen’s Green, within the memory of those still living.

But the ‘car-drivingest citv in ‘Europe,’ as ‘Dublin has been termed, was not even then without its Jehus. The coach, chariot, and ‘noddie could all be hired. The last-named, the predecessor of the ‘Irish jaunting-car,’ is described by a contemporary as being ‘nothing more than an old cast-off one-horse chaise or chair; with a kind of stool fixed upon the shafts, just before the seat, on which the driver sits.’ He suggests that the ‘nod, nod, nodding of the drober’ gave its popular name to this conveyance. (Hibernia Curiosa)

The coach cost 1s. 1d. for a set down, or 1s. 7d. by the hour; the chariot 7d. and 1s. 1d., and the ‘noddie’ 5d and 10d. The strange-looking sum of is. 1s. 1d. represents the Irish shilling or ‘thirteen,’ previously referred to, and mention of which occurs in a once-popular street ballad, in the lines:

‘I gave the Captain six thirteens

To carry me over to Park Gate. ’

To the inconvenience of the pedestrian, in addition to those already enumerated, must be added the nuisance of street beggars, and the perils of footpads. Dr Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne, writing in 1773, speaks hopefully of the suppression of ‘the nuisance of beggary, grievous beyond the experience of other great cities.’ The absence of a poor-rate or any proper provision for the destitute, and the poverty of the country districts, filled the streets of Dublin with applicants for charity, who proved as great a pest to the visitor in the eighteenth century as were the Killarney beggars to the tourist of the latter half of the nineteenth.

No sooner had the stranger landed at Howth, the Pigeon House, or George’s Quay, than he was assailed by the clamours of crowds of miserable objects, part of the standing arm y of 2,000 city beggars, who accompanied him in his walks abroad, blocked the exits from the shops in which he made his purchases, and against whose persistence the closed doors or a private dwelling alone availed to protect him.

But if the streets by day were rendered unpleasant by these mendicants, as soon as the shades of evening fell the dangers from footpads and highwaymen were infinitely more serious. For instance, we read: ’ A few nights since Mr. Hume was attacked by two footpads in Merrion Street, and robbed of two guineas and his watch. They warned him to behave quietly, and give up what he had about him; for if he made any resistance, they would cut him without mercy.’ (*Town and Country Weekly Magazine, *19th January 1786.)

And in the same newspaper: ‘Monday se’nnight, Mr. Egan, a reputable citizen, living opposite Bridge Street, in Cook Street, was attacked by a set of villains on the Inn’s Quay, opposite that part where the Cloisters formerly were; they took what money he had about him, and two gold chains and seals; nay, gave him a violent blow with a blunderbuss on his head, and abused him otherwise so severely that his life is since despaired of.’

Indeed, even in the day-time pedestrians were not always safe, as we read, still in the same newspaper: The weather these few days past being so remarkably fine, it has tempted the ladies to walk the Circular Road; we therefore caution them not to walk on any part of it that is lonesome; for two ladies, last Tuesday at noon, walking on that part near Donnybrook Road narrowly escaped being robbed by a single footpad, and only for the sudden and fortunate appearance of a gentleman, they certainly would.’

That no lack of severity on the part of the authorities can be held accountable for this prevalence of robberies with violence may be inferred from the following account of an execution at Kilmainham. (The ancient Danish place of execution was Gallows Hills, east of St. Stephen’s Green and south of Lower Baggot Street. A gallows still stood near St. Stephen’s Green in 1786, and here the four pirates mentioned shortly, were hanged) ‘The execution of five footpads on Saturday last’ (25th June 1785) ‘was, by an accident, rendered distressing to every person capable of feeling for the misfortunes of their fellow-creatures. In about a minute after the five unhappy criminals were turned off; the temporary gallows fell down, and on its re-erection, it was found necessary to suffer three of the unhappy wretches to remain half-strangled on the ground until the other two underwent the sentence of the law, when they in their turn were tied up and executed.’ This extract is a good example of the sentimentalism iii such matters which characterised the period.

Three more executions were carried out at the same place on 26th January 1786. The presence of so much wealth in Dublin, while so many of its inhabitants were destitute, must be held accountable for much of this crime, as we find it noted’ in Twiss’s tour that ‘footpads, robberies, and highwaymen are seldom heard of except in the vicinity of Dublin.’

In the city, however, scarcely a week seems to have passed in which some burglary or robbery with violence is not chronicled. Such being the condition of the streets, we need scarcely wonder that the roads in the neighbourhood of the city were infested with highwaymen. In a number of the same weekly paper we read: ‘The lads of the road were rather unfortunate on Sunday last, and that too on a cruise in which they expected to levy considerable contributions (Donnybrook Road at fair-time), for between the hours of nine and ten, six of them having’ stopped a capriole *(sic) *near Cold blow Lane and called on the gentlemen therein to deliver their money, one of the gentlemen instantly presenting a musket at them they made a precipitate retreat. Their next attack was on a coach, in which unfortunately for them were four Independent Dublin Volunteers, full armed, two of whom, as soon as one of the robbers presented a pistol at the window, jumped out at the other, and after knocking the villains down with the butts of their firelocks, seized them, notwithstanding a desperate resistance, and brought them to town, where after securing five of them for the night, they had them next morning brought before the sitting magistrate, at the Tholsel, and committed to take their trial.’

Indeed, gentlemen belonging to the volunteers often took upon themselves to patrol the streets at night, and thus men of rank might be found discharging the duties now committed to the capable charge of the Metropolitan Police.

That crime was not limited to robberies from houses or from the person is indicated by the frequent arrest of coiners; and in March 1766 four pirates, captured near Dungannon Fort, Waterford, were hanged in St. Stephen’s Green, and their bodies suspended in chains on the south wall and afterwards removed to the Muglins, a cluster of small rocks near Dalkey Island.

The dangers of the streets were further added to by the conduct of the ‘Bucks’ and ‘Bloods,’ young men of fashion, who founded the notorious ‘Hell Fire Club,’ the remains of whose clubhouse still form a landmark on the summit of one of the Dublin mountains. They are said to have set fire to the apartment in which they met, and ‘endured the flames with incredible obstinacy … in derision … of the threatened torments of a future state.’ (*Ireland Sixty Years Ago, *Dublin, 1851, p.18.)

The conduct of these ‘Bloods’ may be gauged by the following extract from a contemporary newspaper: ‘Three Bloods passing through High Street amused themselves by breaking windows, and on one of the inhabitants complaining of their ill-conduct, they pursued him into his shop, struck him violently, and had the brutality to give his wife a dreadful blow in the face. Two of them were soon obliged to retreat and leave their companion behind, who was lodged in the Black Dog Prison’ (Formerly Browne’s Castle (Mayor in 1614), converted into an inn, known, from its sign of a talbot or hound, as the Black Dog, and early in the 18th century used as the Marshalsea Prison.)

Many of these ’ Bloods’ were known as ‘sweaters ’ and ‘pinkindindies’; the former practised ‘sweating,’ that is, forcing persons to deliver up their arms; the latter cut off. a small portion from the ends of their scabbards, suffering the naked point of the sword to project; with these they prodded or ‘pinked’ those unoffending passers-by on whom they thought fit to bestow their attentions.

The outrages of these ruffians led to an universal demand for the re-enactment of the ‘Chalking Acts.’ These Acts imposed extreme penalties on those offenders known as ‘chalkers,’ who mangled and disfigured persons ‘merely with the wanton and wicked intent to disable and disfigure them.’ That these provisions were especially directed against young men of the better class is evident from the provision that the offence shall not corrupt the offender’s blood, or entail the forfeiture of his property to the prejudice of his wife or relatives.

The practice of wearing swords, then universal with men of rank and fashion, fostered the spirit of aggressive outrage on the peaceable citizens, and is also accountable for the prevalence of duelling, in which the most eminent members of the Bar and Senate commonly engaged. Fitzgibbon, the Attorney-General, afterwards Lord Chancellor and Earl of Clare, fought with Curran, afterwards Master of the Rolls. Scott, afterwards Lord Chief-Justice of the King’s Bench and Earl of Clonmell, had a duel with Lord Tyrawly on a quarrel about his wife, and afterwards met the Earl of Llandaff in an affair concerning his sister.

Nor were the quiet shades of Trinity College free from the practice. The Hon. Hely Hutchinson, when Provost, fought a duel with a Master in Chancery, and his son, following the paternal tradition, fought Lord Mountnorris. In a duel fought on Sunday, 18th November 1787, in the Phoenix Park, the hat of one of the principals was twirled round by his opponent’s ball, and the latter received a shot which grazed one of his breast-buttons.

The notorious ‘fighting Fitzgerald’ made it a practice to stand in the middle of a narrow crossing of a dirty street, so that every chance passenger had either to step into the mud, or jostle him in passing. In the latter event a duel immediately followed. It has been calculated that during the last two decades of the 18th century no less than 300 notable duels were fought.

Both duelling and riotous conduct were greatly fostered by the prevalence of drunkenness, especially amongst the upper classes. Dublin had long had an unenviable notoriety in that respect. An Irish priest, in a Gaelic address to his countrymen from Rome, towards the close of the seventeenth century, styles his native city ‘Dublin of the Wine Bottles’.

Winetavern Street is one of the oldest streets of the city; and in the reign of Charles ii.,** **with a population of 4,000 families, there were 1,180 ale-houses and 91 public brew-houses. (Sir William Petty) In 1763 the importation of claret, the fashionable drink of the upper classes, had reached 8,000 tuns, and the bottles alone were estimated at the value of £67,000.

Fathers exhorted their sons to ‘make their heads while they were young,’ and bottles and glasses were alike constructed with rounded ends, so that the former must perforce be passed from hand to hand, and the latter must be emptied before being set down. The Bar, the Church, the Senate, the Medical profession, even the Bench itself, were alike subject to this degrading excess; and drunkenness was so common, especially amongst the higher grades of society, as to entail no social censure whatsoever.

Still Dublin contained many worthy and public-spirited citizens, to some of whom much of her present condition is largely due. In 1731 was founded a society under the modest title of ‘The Dublin Society,’ to which the city has since owed an ever-increasing debt of gratitude, and of which Lord Chesterfield said that ‘it did more good to Ireland with regard to arts and industry ‘than all the laws that could have been framed.’

Its inception was mainly due to two private citizens, Mr. Thomas Prior and Dr. Samuel Madden. After having been in existence for fifteen years its operations had been so ‘successfully extended as to obtain an annual bounty of £500 from the Civil List, ‘and in 1750 it received a Royal Charter and was incorporated ‘for Promoting ‘Husbandry and Other Useful Arts in Ireland,’ being henceforth assisted to this end by successive grants from the Irish Parliament.

In the last decade of the century this Society had commenced the laying out of the present beautiful Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, then a fashionable suburb on the right bank of the river Tolka, in grounds formerly the demesne of Tickell, the poet; the yew-tree walk in the gardens still bearing the name of ‘Addison’s Walk,’ from the poet’s friend, who often stayed with him here.

The last act of the Irish Parliament was a grant of £10,000 to the Society, of which sum £1,500 was to be devoted to the completion of the Gardens. The Botanic Gardens are now under the management of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction.

Of the churches built during the 18th century thechief survivals are St. Ann’s, St. Catherine’s, St. Mark’s, St. Thomas’s, St. Werburgh’s, and St. Matthew’s, Irishtown. The existing parish of St. Matthew, constituted soon after the passing of the Irish Church Act of 1870, originally formed part of the parish of Donnybrook.

In 1704 the church was erected under the style of ‘The Royal Chapel of St. Matthew, Ringsend,’ and was a royal donative chapelry without cure of souls but subject to episcopal jurisdiction. Originally founded to meet the spiritual needs of the revenue officers and other English dwellers in the little port, it was continued first as a garrison chapel, and later for the use of an English 18th century colony of fishers and other sea-going folk whose descendants still form an appreciable element of the population.

The church was restored and enlarged in 1878-79. St. Ann’s, Dawson Street, was built in 1707 on a site presented to the parishioners of St. Bride’s by Joshua Dawson, Esq., when St. Ann’s was erected into a distinct parish. The present very striking front was built in 1868-69. The church of St. Catherine in Thomas Street, designed by John Smith, was erected, 1760-69, on the site of the Abbey of St. Thomas, afterwards Thomas Court, founded in honour of St. Thomas a Becket by Hugh de Lacy, a very flourishing 12th century foundation outside the city walls. It was granted to the Brabazon family (Earls of Meath) by Henry viii., and from them the old Liberty of St. Thomas acquired the title of the Meath Liberty.

It has a classical granite facade; in the centre four Doric semi-columns support a pediment, and in the intervals of the central columns is the principal entrance between two Ionic pillars. The unfinished western tower contains the belfry, and was originally intended to have supported a steeple and spire. The stucco-work of the recess which contains the communion table is worthy of notice.

The church of St. Social Mark in Great Brunswick Street, 1729, has little architectural merit. A wooden pulpit in the churchyard, divided from a busy thoroughfare by a railing, is used in open air services held on Sunday evenings in summer. The church of St. Thomas in Marlborough Street was copied by John Smith from a design of Palladio, and built 1758-62.

It has a low Corinthian facade, and the appearance of the church, as seen from Gloucester Street, is ugly in the extreme, the huge bulk of the body of the church with its enormous roof dwarfing the elegant Palladian front. A steeple, to consist of two pilasters and two three-quarter columns of the composite order supporting an entablature and pediment, for which a design had been prepared by an architect named Baker, would have done much to remedy this unsightliness, but was never carried out.

The church of St. Werburgh, in the street of the same name, possesses much more interest, historical and otherwise, than any of its contemporaries. A church was here dedicated in Danish times to St. Martin, the ruins of which were still traceable in 1632, and close to it was built, within seven years of the Anglo-Norman settlement; the church of St. Werburgh, ‘so called of a Cheshire virgin.’ (Stanihurst)

This foundation is mentioned among Dublin churches in a bull of Pope Alexander III. of 1179. It included two chapels, Our Ladie’s and St. Martin’s, and was burned in 1311. The dedication is accounted for by the Bristol settlement under Henry iii. St. Werburga was daughter of Wulfhere, Saxon king of Mercia (d. 683), and the Cathedral of Chester was formerly the Abbey of St. Werburgh. She was not only abbess of the Chester convent, but had the direction of many other foundations, and one of the oldest churches in Bristol is also dedicated to this saint. (Chester, in the present series, p. 30. Bertram C. A. Windle.)

The neighbouring church of St. Mary del Dam (nearly on the site of the City Hall), was parochially united to St. Werburgh’s by Archbishop Browne, about 1550, when the former became a secular building, and was leased to Sir George Carew, Earl of Totnes, and subsequently to Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, who erected Cork House on its site, from which the sharp ascent to the Castle still bears the name of Cork Hill.

In 1710, the church being so decayed and ruinous as to be unsafe for public worship, and insufficient for the wants of the increasing parish, Captain Thomas Burgh, M.P. for Naas, Surveyor-General for Public Buildings, was entrusted with the erection of the present structure: this was completed, so far as to admit of the celebration of divine service, in 1719, at a cost of £8,000, a grant from the Crown of the site of the former Treasury providing the greater part of the necessary funds.

A bequest of James Southwell, in 1728, of £431, provided a clock and peal of six bells, set up in 1732. The tower, a lofty octagon, adorned with Ionic pilasters, was completed by a gift of £300 from the Dublin Corporation, and in 1731 were added a wooden dome and cross.

On November 9th, 1754, an accidental fire, believed to have been caused by emptying the candle-snuffers on the straw matting covering the floors of the pews, destroyed the foof, dome, organ, pews and galleries, and injured the tower.

The parishioners though numerous and mainly Protestant - in 1630 there had been 239 householders of whom only 28 were Roman Catholics - were slow to re-edify their church, and in four years had only subscribed £500. A grant was procured from George ii. of £2,000, and the Reverend Sir Philip Hoby, then incumbent, bequeathed at his death £1,000 to build a spire and procure a new organ.

The restoration was completed by 1759, and, nine years later the spire, rising 160 feet above ground level and said to have been the lightest and most elegant in Ireland, was added. From a square structure rose a graceful and slender octagon supported on eight rusticated pillars with intervals between, and terminating in a cross, afterwards replaced by a gilt ball. After having stood for 40 years this spire was believed to be out of the perpendicular, and a grand jury presentment in 1810 decreed its removal.

Though Francis Johnstone under-took to secure it on arched vaults; his plans were rejected; and, on the proposal of Edward Robbins, Master of the Corporation of Bricklayers, it was taken down at a cost of £450*. *The tower was demolished in 1836, the hells unhung and placed in the vestibule, and five of them sold in 1855.

Notwithstanding the loss of the superstructure the exterior of the church is still of considerable beauty. The classical front consists of two storeys; the first or basement ornamented by six Ionic pilasters supporting handsome plain entablatures, and having three entrances, a large Doric gateway, over which is a semi-circular pediment, and small doorways on each side, leading to the north and south galleries.

The second storey is Corinthian, has a large window lighting the bell-loft, and is crowned with a pediment. Above this formerly stood the belfry storey surmounted by a low parapet, from which the spire rose gradually.

In 1829 the church is believed to have been singular among Dublin parish churches in the possession of a stained glass window in which figures were introduced; a further proof of the puritan leanings of the city church-goers. The beautiful carved pulpit originally stood in the Chapel Royal, and was thence removed to the church of St. John in 1864, being replaced by one of stone.

On the union of this parish with St. Werburgh’s in 1877 the former church was closed and the pulpit transferred to the latter It is commonly believed to be the work of Grinling Gibbons, but this appears more than problematical. Beneath the church are 27 vaults, two being under the chancel. To one of the latter the body of Lord Edward FitzGerald was removed on his death in New Gate in 1798; and in another of the vaults is buried Sir James Ware, the antiquary (1594-1666). Strangely enough, in the east corner of the graveyard was interred, in 1841, Major Henry Charles Sirr, the officer who effected the arrest of Lord Edward.

Built into the exterior of the south wall are the remains of an Altar-tomb of the FitzGerald family, transferred successively from the Priory of All Hallows to the church of St. Mary del Dam and thence to a pew in the old church of St. Werburgh. The church plate dates from the 17th century, one of the patens being the gift of Thomas Doggett, churchwarden, 1693, father of the comedian.

On the south side of the church in the 17th century stood the ‘main guard’ of the city, where military offenders were forced to ‘ride the wooden horse.’ It was afterwards used as a watch house. A passage from St. Werburgh Street to St. Nicholas Street was known at the close of the 12th century as Vicus Sutorum or Le Sutter Lane; and at its entrance in St. Werburgh Street the Four Courts Marshalsea was built about 1580, but afterwards removed first to Bridge Street and later to Molesworth Court.

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